A man wearing a face mask as a precaution against the coronavirus, walks past in front of an advertisement of an opera performance outside of a theater in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, March 3, 2021. (Photo by Lee Jin-man/AP Photo)

Visitors wearing face masks walk near the Gwanghwamun, the main gate of the 14th-century Gyeongbok Palace, and one of South Korea's well-known landmarks, in Seoul, South Korea, Saturday, February 22, 2020. South Korea on Saturday reported a six-fold jump in viral infections in four days to 346, most of them linked to a church and a hospital in and around the fourth-largest city where schools were closed and worshipers and others told to avoid mass gatherings. (Photo by Lee Jin-man/AP Photo)

Citizens are enjoying the festival by shooting hot spring water guns at the Yuseong Hot Spring Festival held on Oncheon-ro in Yuseong-gu, Daejeon in the first decade of May 2025. (Photo by Shin Hyeon-jong)

At this year’s Venice Bienniale in Italy, the Korean pavilion has a curious exhibit called “Commissions for Utopia”. It includes renderings from North Korea’s top architects and artists (all anonymous), many of whom studied at the Paekho Institute of Architecture, North Korea’s state-run architectural college, and none of whom have ever left the country. They were asked to create a vision of North Korea’s future sustainable architecture for its expanding tourism industry. Their final products are a glimpse into what it would be like to envision the future after being entirely cut off from the present for almost 70 years. (Photo by Nick Bonner/Kyle Vanhemert/Venice Architecture Biennale)

A leaflet denouncing South Korean President Park Geun-hye lies on the ground after it was torn at a protest calling Park to step down, in Seoul, South Korea, November 19, 2016. (Photo by Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)

People take a walk among cherry blossoms at a park in Seoul, South Korea on April 6, 2022. (Photo by Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)

People pose for photos among a field of cosmos flowers in a car park before high-rise apartment buildings in Goyang, west of Seoul on September 22, 2020. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP Photo)

In a photo taken on October 7, 2020 a woman holds two dogs as she waits for a train in Suncheon. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP Photo)